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There is reafon to think that Cowley promised little. It does not appear that his compliance gained him confidence enough to be trufted without fecurity, for the bond of his bail was never cancelled; nor that it made him think himself secure, for at that diffolution of government, which followed the death of Oliver, he returned into France, where he resumed his former station, and staid till the Restoration.

"He continued," fays his biographer, "under "these bonds till the general deliverance;" it is therefore to be fuppofed, that he did not go to France, and act again for the King without the confent of his bondsman; that he did not fhew his loyalty at the hazard of his friend, but by his friend's permiffion.

Of the verses on Oliver's death, in which Wood's narrative seems to imply fomething encomiaftick, there has been no appearance. There is a difcourfe concerning his government, indeed, with verfes intermixed, but fuch as certainly gained its author no friends among the abettors of ufurpation.

A doctor of phyfick however he was made at Oxford, in December 1657; and in the commencement of the Royal Society, of which an account has been published by Dr. Birch, he appears bufy among the experimental philofophers with the title of Doctor Cowley.

There is no reafon for fuppofing that he ever attempted practice; but his preparatory ftudies have contributed fomething to the honour of his country. Confidering Botany as necessary to a physician, he retired into Kent to gather plants; and as the predomi nance of a favourite ftudy affects all fubordinate operations of the intellect, Botany in the mind of Cowley turned into Poetry. He compofed in Latin feveral

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books on Plants, of which the first and second display the qualities of Herbs, in elegiac verfe; the third and fourth the beauties of Flowers in various measures; and in the fifth and fixth, the uses of trees in heroick numbers.

At the fame time were produced from the fame university, the two great Poets, Cowley and Milton, of diffimilar genius, of oppofite principles; but concurring in the cultivation of Latin poetry, in which the English, till their works and May's poem appeared *, feemed unable to conteft the palm with any other of the lettered nations.

If the Latin performances of Cowley and Milton be compared, for May I hold to be fuperior to both, the advantage seems to lie on the fide of Cowley. Milton is generally content to exprefs the thoughts of the ancients in their language; Cowley, without much lofs of purity or elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions.

At the Restoration, after all the diligence of his long fervice, and with consciousness not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the dignity of great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments; and that he might not be forgotten by his own fault, wrote a Song of Triumph. But this was a time of fuch general hope, that great numbers were inevitably difappointed; and Cowley found his reward very tediously delayed. He had been promised by both Charles the firft and fecond

* By May's Poem, we are here to understand a continuation of Lucan's Pharfalia to the death of Julius Cæfar, by Thomas May, an eminent poet and hiftorian, who flourished in the reigns of James and Charles I, and of whom a life is given in the Biographia Britannica.

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the Mastership of the Savoy; "but he loft it," fays Wood," by certain perfons, enemies to the Mufes."

The neglect of the court was not his only mortification; having, by fuch alteration as he thought proper, fitted his old Comedy of the "Guardian" for the ftage, he produced it to the public under the title of "The "Cutter of Coleman-ftreet *." It was treated on the ftage with great feverity, and was afterwards cenfured as a fatire on the king's party.

Mr. Dryden, who went with Mr. Sprat to the first exhibition, related to Mr. Dennis, "that when they "told Cowley, how little favour had been fhewn him, "he received the news of his ill fuccefs, not with fo "much firmness as might have been expected from fo great a man."

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What firmness they expected, or what weakness Cowley discovered, cannot be known. He that miffes his end will never be as much pleased as he that attains it, even when he can impute no part of his failure to himself; and when the end is to please the multitude, no man, perhaps, has a right, in things admitting of gradation and comparifon, to throw the whole blame upon his judges, and totally to exclude diffidence and fhame by a haughty consciousness of his own excellence.

For the rejection of this play, it is difficult now to find the reason: it certainly has, in a very great de gree, the power of fixing attention and exciting merri

* Here is an error in the defignation of this comedy, which our author copied from the title-page of the latter editions of Cowley's works: the title of the play itfelf, is, without the article, "Cutter of "Coleman-ftreet," and that, becaufe a merry fharking fellow about the town, named Cutter, is a principal character in it.

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ment. From the charge of difaffection he exculpates himself in his preface, by obferving how unlikely it is that, having followed the royal family through all their diftreffes, "he fhould chufe the time of their re"ftoration to begin a quarrel with them." It appears, however, from the Theatrical Regifter of Downes the Prompter, to have been popularly confidered as a fatire on the royalists.

That he might shorten this tedious suspense, he publifhed his pretenfions and his difcontent, in an ode called "The Complaint;" in which he ftyles himfelf

Its merit, in the opinion of Dr. Johnfon, confifted greatly in an exact difcrimination of a variety of new characters, and in the pointed ridicule of puritanical manners therein difplayed. I have heard him, with great delight, refer to the following dialogue of Cutter and Mrs. Tabitha.

CUT. They [miracles] are not ceas'd, brother, nor fhall they ceafe till the monarchy be established.

I fay again, I am to return, and to return upon a purple dromedary, which fignifies magistracy, with an axe in my hand that is called reformation, and I am to strike with that axe upon the gate of Westminster hall, and cry, Down Babylon, and the building called Westminster hall is to run away, and cast itself into the river, and then major general Harrison is to come in green fleeves from the North, upon a sky-coloured mule, which fignifies heavenly inftruction.

TAB. O the father! He's as full of myfteries as an egg is full

of meat.

CUT. And he is to have a trumpet in his mouth as big as a fteeple, and at the founding of that trumpet all the churches in London are to fall down.

WID. Oh strange, what times fhall we fee here in poor England! CUT. And then Venner shall march up to us from the Weft, in the figure of a wave of the fea, holding in his hand a ship that shall be called the ark of the reformed.

An admirable example of this kind of fatire, levelled as it feems, against Prynne's book, "The Unloveliness of Love-locks," may be feen in the City Match, a comedy by Dr. Jasper Mayne, Act II.

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the melancholy Cowley. This met with the ufual for tune of complaints, and feems to have excited more contempt than pity.

These unlucky incidents are brought, maliciously enough, together in fome ftanzas, written about that time, on the choice of a laureat; a mode of fatire, by which, fince it was first introduced by Suckling, perhaps every generation of poets has been teazed:

Savoy-miffing Cowley came into the court,

Making apologies for his bad play;
Every one gave him fo good à report,

That Apollo gave heed to all he could fay:
Nor would he have had, 'tis thought, a rebuke,
Unless he had done fome notable folly;
Writ verfes unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke,
Or printed his pitiful Melancholy.

His vehement defire of retirement now came again upon him. "Not finding," fays the morofe Wood, "that preferment conferred upon him which he expected, while others for their money carried away "moft places, he retired difcontented into Surrey."

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"He was now," fays the courtly Sprat, "weary of "the vexations and formalities of an active condition. "He had been perplexed with a long compliance to fo

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reign manners. He was fatiated with the arts of a "court; which fort of life, though his virtue made "it innocent to him, yet nothing could make it quiet. "Thofe were the reafons that made him to follow the "violent inclination of his own mind, which, in the "greatest throng of his former bufinefs, had ftill called, upon him, and reprefented to him the true delights "of folitary ftudies, of temperate pleasures, and a "moderate

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